Disappeared News

Thursday, December 29, 2016

These days people believe fake news. In particular, when a mainstream news outlet such as the UK’s Daily Mail promulgates it, Twitter and other social media can transform it into a form of popular reality.

With this in mind I was skeptical immediately when a Google alert plunked this headline from today’s Daily Mail website into my inbox:

When 'paradise' goes to hell: Hawaiian shores full of rotting trash and a waste-swamped Indonesia... the planet's most polluted destinations revealed

Hey – I live here, in “paradise” so to speak, and the shores are not full of rotting trash or any of the other pollution sites that the article highlighted in numerous photographs.

These images serve as a chilling insight into the world's most wretched and disregarded dumping grounds.

They have a picture of Midway Island. That is not one of the “travel destinations that frequently sit at the top of bucket lists.”

I sent an email to the corrections editor. Let’s see if they have a map handy to check on exactly where Midway is, or if they’ll check to see if it’s on the bucket list of any of their staff.

As to the Midway picture itself, it’s a deception. The pile of rubbish shown is a pile that was collected. In other words, the heap resulted from a cleanup. That pile is not the same as the one of the severely polluted Ganges river or the other images they chose to post.

Shame, Daily Mail, for posting “fake news” that does nothing but pollute your own website.